Former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith heads the list of high profile Labour casualties this morning.
Meanwhile current party top brass thought to be under threat, such as Ed Balls, have so far been returned by their constituents.
Karen Lumley, Smith's Tory opponent in the Redditch constituency overturned a majority of 1,948 to win …

COMMENTS

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Anti Tory

If you add up the votes of all the other parties there is a strong anti-Tory majority of several seats. What clearer mandate could there be for Brown to continue the success story of the past 13 years, and press ahead with the ever popular ID card scheme?

huh

Problem is that being "not the Tories" is not a unitary platform. Lib Dems, SNP, Plaid Cymru etc are all "anti-Tory" but they're all also "anti-Labour". SNP and PC are to the left of Labour while Lib Dems are split between being to the left and being to the right.

Account hijack...

@Just Thinking

I've 'upvoted' (yuk) your posting on the basis that you meant for it to be in Lavender, in accordance with the proposals* from the Vulture Central Humour Comprehensibility Committee, under the iron rule of Lester (for it is he) but which, because they seem to spend most of their time quaffing cider down the Fighting Dog and Pikey, has not yet been implemented. Tsk.

If you weren't being ironic, please remember that I voted after 1000pm on Thursday, and it therefore doesn't count.

To the barricades, mon braves!

*(see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/02/01/the_color_of_irony/)

IT icon because it can only be a matter of minutes before some idiot suggests a multi-million pound (about $10 at the current exchange rate) government IT project to address the procedural jobsworthian cock-up at some polling stations last night.

'Success story' ?

Hmmmmm

The previous years under the other lot would be a fair guess. Bank deregualation (leading too...), selling off national companies for peanuts and of course two enconomic downturns that you couldn't blame on a bunch of jokers playing poker with other's money.

Not that it changes anything, but...

What No IT

As mentioned - where's the IT angle?

Obviously which party gets in will decide how much gets spent, whether contractors can dump IR35 etc, but none of this is mentioned in the article.

Even the Sun managed to get an angle by saying that your Bulgarian Funbag viewing would be compromised if you didn't vote Conservative. (There's even an IT angle in this as the Guardian claims it was photoshopped),

When sensible humane people are made Home Secretary they appear to turn evil and stupid and vicious.

Either a radiation dose to the right side of the brain, or something they put in the tea, is my two best guesses. I mean, I don't like to think that these people were ******s all along and we just didn't notice. You turn into a ****** when you get the job. And after you lose the job, you stay as a ******. I think I'd turn the job down. Or bring a Thermos flask and a tinfoil hat. Maybe not the professional image...

I've wondered whether the job somehow involves talking like a ****** - "prison works" et cetera - when it isn't what you really believe, but then why do they go on being ******s when there's been a reshuffle and the job has been given to some other ******?

Now Foreign Secretary is different. Every country in the world has the same foreign policy, and that is "******** You". So Hillary Clinton is a ****** these days but I believe it's only a professional posture. When President Obama, whom I admire, deals with foreign affairs, he too is a ******, most of the time. A tip of the hat for his efforts in nuclear disarmament. British Foreign Secretaries are also ******s, but not on the inside. The job is to be a ******. They don't take it home with them.

I haven't heard what happened to the new Speaker. Now he had a right ****** standing agtinst him. But, troublingly, the sort of ****** that a lot of ******s will vote for.

Eh?

I'd take issue with that. Equating a money-grubbing group such as nuLabour with communism is a bit like saying that Microsoft are a genial open-source company. Both scenarios need o be taken with several large pinches of salt.

Don't let the door hit your (massive) arse on the way out

The Doomday scenario

Broon declares that he can best "Serve the country" by invoking emergency powers and instituting direct rule by the cabinet as a "temporary" measure.

You just *know* he's not going to leave the No 10 bunker without a fight.

On a happier note.

It was never really likely Blunkett and Johnson would be dumped as well. A truly *clean* sweep was too much to hope for. Dumping Johnson (and 1 or 2 of his junior henchpersons) might have thrown another spanner in the ID card works however. As it stands they sound like the leads in really bad 70s cop show.

In American English (sic) nothing parses

The travesty of spelling and grammar that is American English should be washed down the sewer where it belongs as soon as possible. As a small point, majority, as a noun, is perfectly happy to be overturned.

Along with the ridiculous weights and measures that all of 3 countries in the world use, Liberia, Burma and the USA for those wanting to identify the third world correctly.

And finally, football is short for association football, and around 5.7bn in the world understand that it means the sport where you spend most of the game kicking a ball with your feet. Not American Football which only around 300mn in the world call football.

wonder what its like

I wonder what its like to be the greatest empire in history only to watch yourself slide into near irrelevancy while a former colony dwarfs you in every sense of the word. Guess you are still sore about the UK and Blair being our lap dog and doing exactly what we ordered in Iraq (misery loves company I suppose). Yes the US has lots of problems these days but the UK is not looking a lot better according to the article and comments (brothers in massive debt as well, but then we don't have to defend the EU thank God). Still chew on this fact as far as advancing the knowledge of humanity.

Nobel prize winners:

UK - 116 (not bad)

US - 320 (unmatched)

Israel - 9 (not bad for only 6 million people and only existing 60 years)

Iran - 2 (literature and peace but still positive number is good)

Iraq and Afghanistan combined - 0 (pretty much sums up their contribution to humanity in the last century, dumb friggin republicans with their industrial complex dogs of war

Congratulations

While it is unfortunate that your country will be plagued by the problems attendant upon having a minority government for the next few years or months, at least George Galloway has lost his seat, I hear.